by Nick Fishman

We were so excited about our List of 2009 Background Screening Trends that we decided to give followers of our blog and employeescreen University a sneak peek. These trends will be officially released next Tuesday at the Annual SHRM Conference.

Some of our trends include:

1. The Importance of Thorough Background Checks in a Shrinking Job Market

2. The Use of Social Networking Sites to Screen Individuals

3. The Screening of Outside Contractors

4. Background-screening for Existing Employees

Click here to view the full list of trends with descriptions

by Jason Morris

We were just notified about this from the Executive Director of NAPBS®. The good news is NAPBS® has been successful 100% of the time when these issues arise. This Bill was passed 46 to 17 by the Rhode Island House.

We have written about these issues many times before. We support ex-offenders and their rights to enjoy gainful employment. In fact, GOSO (Getting Out and Staying Out) is one of our corporate philanthropy’s. We just think employers have the right to know! Employers have the responsibility to ensure a safe working environment for their employees, customers and vendors. Its a slippery slope when putting forth legislation such as this. My hope is that the RI Senate quashes this effort, if not, a Veto from the Governor is also possible. Please take the time to write to the RI Legislatures about this issue!

House OKs bill to destroy criminal records

By Katherine Gregg
Journal State House Bureau

PROVIDENCE — Advocates for convicted criminals scored a victory on Smith Hill yesterday.

Despite objections from the attorney general, the state police and the governor, the House voted 46 to 17 for a bill to quash and destroy the records of criminal cases in which the accused was given a deferred sentence, usually in exchange for sparing the state a trial by pleading no contest or guilty to a crime.

The bill, which is now headed to the Senate, calls for the automatic destruction of all such records at the end of the deferral period — which usually runs five years, regardless of how serious the crime or the criminal history of the offender as long as he or she stayed out of trouble in the interim.

The bill sailed through the House with no debate yesterday after a heated — but short-circuited debate earlier this week — in which proponents assured their colleagues it was aimed at helping people remove from their records youthful indiscretions that were keeping them from moving ahead in life, school and jobs, and opponents noted the bill goes much further than the state’s existing expungement law in that it is not limited to nonviolent crimes by first-time offenders.

Beyond that, critics argued that it could be used as a legal club to try to prevent newspapers from publishing facts that the public already knows about crimes — or perhaps should know — if they involve candidates for a job, including public office. Current state law bars people with certain felony convictions from obtaining state licenses to work in nursing, social work and auto repair: this would provide a way around that.

“So now we are rewriting history and telling the newspaper they can’t refer to something that everybody knows about?” Rep. Laurence Ehrhardt, R-North Kingstown, asked rhetorically.

More

by Nick Fishman

One of our favorites, W. Barry Nixon from The National Institute For The Prevention of Workplace Violence  contacted Jason Morris and I about a year ago and asked if we would be interested in writing a chapter about International Background Checks for a book he intended to publish for those interested in learning how to manage hiring risks.  Together Jason and I collaborated with Les Rosen and Michael Damm to describe a process that at best had been sparsely addressed in the past.

The book entitled “Background Screening and Investigations: Managing Hiring Risk from the HR and Security Perspectives” was recently released and contains expert content from the most respected people in the screening industry today.  Those who deal with background checks in both HR and security can greatly benefit from this advanced level guide to mitigating hiring risk.

We are very proud to be included and think that interested readers can definitely benefit from our collective insights.

If you are interested in purchasing this book, it is available on Amazon.com now.

Click here to get the book now!

by Nick Fishman

employeescreenIQ is very proud to announce the launch of employeescreen University, a first-of-its-kind online, educational learning resource for human resource, security and risk-management professionals, which features regularly updated, free background-screening information aimed to help organizations make better hiring decisions.

We have been working diligently on this concept for some time now and hope you will take advantage of this free resource. We felt and continue to feel that there is so much misinformation out there about what constitutes an effective background check and how to establish a program that works for each individual organization. employeescreen University is all about educating the marketplace and empowering interested individuals with the information they need to develop an effective screening program. We also welcome your feedback and will tailor the site based on the comments and requests we see.

Official employeescreen University News Release

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